


Fraternal Discordance: Or a Study of Mycroft Holmes

by shiju333



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And More Angst, Angst, Bulimia, Eating Disorders, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiju333/pseuds/shiju333
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Self destructive coping mechanisms manifested out of self loathing, the act of throwing the laws of nature in reverse because Mycroft Holmes, the very core of the British government, could not swallow the fact his baby brother was more intelligent than he. (Taken from my ff.net account)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And there is a Whole Childhood in a Nutshell

**Fraternal Discordance: Or a Study of Mycroft Holmes**

Chapter 1: And there is a Whole Childhood in a Nutshell

...

It started in university. Or rather, the behaviours presented in university, because that's how these things generally work: the problem was birthed from an off handed comment, a sneer that may not have been a sneer about a normally insignificant action. Months and years passed as the obsession unfurled, nestling up in every aspect of his life, until, finally, during the first years of independence, everything spiralled in chaotic frenzy. There was no one to watch, aside from few and far between holidays, and when someone finally noticed, after any length of time really, it was already routine in its normalcy.

That was how it worked for Mycroft Holmes. A small incident, something so minute, Mycroft cannot remember exactly what was said to make food anything but nourishment. Age twelve: a slightly plump child on the cusp of his first teenage growth spurt, ostracized by the relentless name calling all through primary school, only it followed him as he advanced in his formative education. Age fifteen: a snarky comment, perhaps from a jealous substandard classmate, maybe from the lips of his dear brother in a childish argument waged with an eight year old. In the end, he did not remember these altercations as anything special.

In the end, maybe it invaded his thought processes after one of many bickering stand offs with, the seven years younger than he, Sherlock (whom quite possibly surpassed him even with the age difference). Self destructive coping mechanisms manifested out of self loathing, the act of throwing the laws of nature in reverse because Mycroft Holmes, the very core of the British government, could not swallow the fact his baby brother was more intelligent than he: he never pondered these moments in the Holmes brothers' histories.

University, three years of rampant binging and purging: carefully balanced meals in the dining hall caved to quick and polite adieus to his new friends, _haut monde_ that would take him far, and quiet desperation to lock himself away in his private apartment, courtesy of Mummy, and gorged on everything he denied himself in those appropriate protein/one carbohydrate/two serves of vegetable/fruit for dessert. After the greed, coaxed by the back end of a toothbrush, the plumbing distended, and occasionally stopped up, with luxury chocolates, the most gourmet biscuits, and imported pastries—in all honesty, any cheap, overly sweet, carbohydrate laden treat for his primordial urges, preferably cream or jam filled.

Senior year, Mycroft completed hastily spliced together compulsory documents for postgraduate admissions between rounds at the toilet; he graduated demurely, putting on a farce of modesty as he accepted his degree and fully acclimated to the world of graduate studies. Sherlock, a teenager near the age Mycroft first noticed his weight and found dissatisfaction in the surplus, narrowed his eyes at him all through Mycroft's last summer spent at home. He harboured suspicions. Obvious. But, Mycroft limited his episodes, his cycles, with the promise of glorious autonomy at the start of the semester; he calculated a mental list, the recipe for the perfect binge.

Autumn announced itself with colourful foliage and cool, blustery winds that made Mycroft's trip to six different specialty shops, list clutched tightly in his hands, that day in mid September temperate. It was the most active he had been since his primary school days. Mycroft christened his new private apartment the night before his first graduate level course, eating his way through a couple hundred quid of gourmet sweets. He regretted that the first impression he gave included his pale face pockmarked with bright red petechiae around his eyes.

Over thirty years passed, and the one occurrence of a less than healthy appearance faded into obscurity. Over the span of his final years as a student, and the transition to, but, a small position in the government, Mycroft cultivated his obsession, twisting the behaviours to fit his persona. He utilized the most rudimentary aspects of subterfuge—partaking in well portioned three meals a day, never succumbing to his behaviours where others might witness him, gagging against the back end of a toothbrush—and added to them.

His position in the government sanctioned many freedoms and liberties which aided his routine quite adequately. The second toothbrush, the one he shoved down his throat regularly, was whisked out of sight beneath a false bottom in his lavatory cabinet, a false bottom equipped with security codes and emergency detonation buttons. Security cameras, behind a façade with the strong arm of government national secrecy, placed around the toilet and the kitchen cupboards ensured he was always alone. The intricacies allowing the behaviours to continue even as he courted fellow upper class citizens were varied and numerous; Mycroft's eating disorder was as tightly wound within the government as he was.

He established his career, past the worries of a novice in the workforce, but still years off considering retirement, still rolling up the hill of age, if only by the grace of a couple years, and thoroughly convinced his eating habits were routine, and anything untoward was discreetly out of sight and completely unassociated with him. Then Dr John Watson, the good army medic, stumbled out of the woodwork, out of Afghanistan, and very much into the presence of his brother's life.

John maintained the relationship Mycroft Holmes strived for with Sherlock: dependable, some bickering interspersed with fond contentment, and, oh, did it grate at him. It swelled in his stomach, a hollow emptiness he contrived as hunger, eventually crawled its way out in practiced, unhurried, almost melodic heaves and splattered backwash in his eyes. Mycroft will never escape him or his only friend, the doctor; he will always be the arch-enemy. John denied his monetary compensation in exchange for observing Sherlock, instead, he ignited a verbal ire in Sherlock, Mycroft had not witnessed since his detox days.

Immature scoffs, juvenile sibling rivalry shredded open in each other's company, and the presence of John did nothing to bandage it. Sherlock retorted in scathing resentment that Mycroft deduced immediately as an iota of a connection: the unconcerned are not quick to rage, and he responded with his own blunt, chilly dismissal. The inconsistencies in his eating were not what he intended to discuss; even if Sherlock gleaned diminutive inklings as a child, surely he did not connect the dots well into his own adulthood.

Another Christmas season with John approached, and this year, like the last, Sherlock was no longer threatened by Irene Adler's death, Moriarty's complex weave, or his own comment—"Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock."—intended as brotherly advice, if in poor taste, no chance of a danger night, unless Sherlock, restless with monotony from the current lull in cases, tempted by the lure of the cocaine, his seven-percent solution… He plunged the thought deep in the recesses of his mind as he allowed himself to be invited up to the flat by Mrs Hudson. That kind of thinking would not benefit anyone.

"He's having a bit of a lie in today, just let yourself up." Mycroft nodded his head and thanked her; the words fell from his lips out of proper British decorum. As he swiftly made his way upstairs, Mrs Hudson's voice floated up behind him with promises of tea, "but only this one time, I'm not his housekeeper."

Slanted, narrowed eyes immediately glanced over him, and Mycroft knew full well nothing was out of place. He had consumed a reasonable breakfast, followed by a cup of tea with just a dash of milk, as was custom. His cheeks bulged slightly, but only a difference he would remember after the years of induced vomiting. His cheeks have remained swollen since his first year of university. "Good morning, Sherlock," Mycroft said as he hung up his outer jacket.

Sherlock lay on the sofa, hands poked out of his favourite dressing robe deftly flipping what Mycroft knew was John's gun. "Mycroft," he muttered, lips barely moving. He gazed up at the ceiling, finding his inspection of Mycroft uninteresting.

Mycroft hid a smile of satisfaction behind his actions. He settled into a chair, John's chair, and folded his arms neatly over his body, neither lounging idiotically, nor hiding and curling in upon himself. "Have you made plans to entertain company again this Christmas?"

"Why are you here, Mycroft?" Sherlock spat, still from his position on the sofa, although his pupils rolled towards Mycroft at the conversational greeting. "You came for a reason." The silent digging of Mycroft's normal lack of active participation in most matters hung between the two.

Mycroft had approached Sherlock for a reason: elementary reasoning; Sherlock was correct. One of his higher up government official acquaintances required Sherlock's unique services. He never visited Sherlock with any case or client that did not spark an interest for Sherlock, whether or not the consulting detective would admit the truism. Mycroft lost himself in the elucidation of the particulars of Sherlock's soon-to-be newest client, momentarily paused by Mrs Hudson's appearance and a tea set: a half box of biscuits and two steaming mugs of tea complete with milk and cubes of sugar.

He continued his explanation once the landlady returned to her flat—ensuring the information remained under tight wraps—, adding a dash of milk to his tea, and grasping one biscuit, a plain digestive he noted. He accepted the understanding he would not leave 221B Baker Street without ingesting three biscuits, as was per the norm. He observed, after a few minutes and only one missed narrowed glance that never failed to remind him of the summer before graduate school, that Sherlock no longer listened with an expression of feigned disinterest, to him, but rather, studied Mycroft.

Mycroft blinked once, never halting in his monologue, and made a quick inventory of himself: three piece suit, pressed neatly, pocket watch, snug securely in his trouser pocket, he was groomed well. On to his actions: he rested in John's chair, legs crossed and a biscuit in hand. He had eaten two, no three, or perhaps four. For god sakes, he was working on his fifth biscuit! He swallowed the bite already in his mouth, and forced it down his throat with a sip of tea, and firmly placed the other half by his cup.

"Digestive biscuits a part of the diet?" Sherlock said as suddenly as he sat up on the sofa to face Mycroft. The gun fell to the floor, ignored. He gulped over half of his own tea in one swallow, eyes gazing into Mycroft's, a smirk played at the edges of his lips, and now, Mycroft remembered the hateful remarks from his adolescence, the scathing insults from Sherlock, the hurtful knowledge of the truth behind his peers' attacks on his weight.

Sherlock continued to drink his tea, still staring and half grinning like he had caught the fat kid smuggling a lolly too many from the sweets drawer. Mycroft forced down the blush threatening to paint his cheeks in an ugly red—similar in colour to the dots that once lined his face, too small to be acne, too big to hide even with foundation, all through university.

He prepared to snap out a reply, his usual one or two liner, short and frank, that forced Sherlock onto a new discussion thread. He meant to say: "In a reasonable amount, yes." Or something akin to that; anything to keep Sherlock's deductions out of his eating habits.

Instead, he set his cup against the saucer with a small clink, and never lifted his eyes from the remaining half of the biscuit, the biscuit and a half too many, the leftovers Sherlock had not yet grabbed for that Mycroft lusted to overfill himself on, then the emergency pack of Jaffa Cakes he ferreted away in his government issued car, then his supply at his quiet spacious mansion, then… "No," he said to the plate of biscuits.

He did not need to raise his head to know Sherlock stared him down like an organism he planned to experiment on. "It's not going well then?" He heard the amusement clearly in Sherlock's question, another rendition of their most basic childish barbs.

"No, it's not."

...


	2. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's perspective

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING There is a scene that could be graphic. I think it serves a place in explaining Sherlock's mind set. The words I chose are intended to convey Sherlock's thoughts about Mycroft's eating disorder.

...

"It's not going well then?" Sherlock leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees as he smirked nastily at Mycroft. Years of sibling rivalry dictated this game, this cat-and-mouse persecution, and Sherlock enjoyed his ability to make his brother squirm.

Something in the atmosphere of the room altered, as if he had been wrenched from underneath a bulky duvet. It was the look on Mycroft's countenance, the slip of character, as his facade slid to the floor, and Sherlock found himself sucked into years of anguish prevalent in his brother's eyes, lined in deep set wrinkles and bruised sleepless bags. His eyes drooped as if too weary to remain open, and Sherlock felt something tight squeeze the amusement from his chest.

Mycroft said, "No, it's not." And his mind spun in hundreds of directions all at once, as he tried to assimilate the sudden deluge of information—the years of bitterness and resentment twisted into forgotten moments in time. Instances Sherlock might have, at one point, deleted. He gripped his knees, fingernails biting into the skin, as a long silence stretched across the sitting room, distending his grasp of reality, and he remembered:

The first Christmas back from uni, and he did not act like himself. Mycroft left for school conceited and brimming with future prospects, as Sherlock suffered the indignity of being seven years his junior, seven years too young to reciprocate with taunts more mature than pokes at his weight, at the cycle of gaining and losing, at the repetition that was somehow wrong. He returned exhausted, ill, and far too distant for Sherlock's liking.

In retrospect, he should have barged through the closed door the first time he noticed, the thick wood unable to mask the sounds of gasping and awful chokes reaching Sherlock's ears. Eleven years old, and too immature to comprehend what Mycroft was up to as he locked himself in the lavatory after family meals, he didn't consider mentioning the peculiar retching.

Three summers later, well within his teens, Sherlock knew Mycroft doubled over the toilet behind the isolated, out of the way, loo door on the third floor. At his age, he easily imagined Mycroft's actions: a cough, or a noise that could be mistaken as a cough—Mycroft wrenched his fingers into his throat; knuckles plunged into his mouth, resting on the backs of his teeth; a groan that could only be described as a retch—wet paths trickled down from Mycroft's eyes to his cheeks as he clenched his stomach muscles and pounded the back of his throat with his fingers; splashing, unmistakable displaced water against something foreign dropping into the toilet bowl, the key evidence in Sherlock's deductions—disgusting, putrid vomit dripped from Mycroft's fingers to the toilet, interspersed only by fingers slipping between his lips as he pried another round of semi-recognisable pastries from his stinging throat. Sherlock's young and somewhat ignorant mind supplied the images as he had been taught in school.

Sherlock rested a palm to the door until, at last, the stillness between Mycroft's shuddering breaths dissolved into the flushing of the toilet. He made it halfway down the hall and well out of sight or suspicion, before Mycroft exited the lavatory, unbeknownst to Sherlock trying and failing to conceal a well worn toothbrush. Twenty-one and fourteen, university graduate with top honours and secondary school student yet to sit his GCSEs: existing on two separate planes, Mycroft's eating disorder—Sherlock knew it happened often enough to be classified as an eating disorder—trickled out of conscious attention, until one night near the end of that endless summer.

The accusations flew, Sherlock, in a piqué of temper after one of Mycroft's _asinine superiority complex-induced_ lectures, blew out the sides of the festering secret, affectively breaking Mummy's heart and sending Dad to retire early with complaints of a stomach ulcer. He bungled it up; he made Mummy cry, and Mycroft lay on the half truths until they went back to their carefully constructed delusion of familial involvement. Then Mycroft walked out the door in September to attend a postgraduate university half way across the country, never mentioning his eating habits again.

When Sherlock overdosed, the first time, on his seven percent solution of cocaine and heroin, Mycroft greeted him as he tried to blink away the agonizing world of hospital, gleeful at Sherlock's recklessness that shifted Mummy's attentions to the younger, still underage, son. The whispered statement compounded with the already forming ache in his skull, but Sherlock recognized the overprotective nature for the disguise it played. Mycroft acted as alarmed elder sibling, allowing the role slice away his own iniquities. Poor, drug addled Sherlock, but that Mycroft, so busy with his schooling and career, never failing to assist his distressed parents—anything to wrench the reality of late night vomiting from anyone's minds.

Sherlock completed secondary school, then college, and manoeuvred his own path in university. He lost contact with Mycroft while the elder established himself into an entry level government position and rapidly toiled his way up—a mutual accord on both ends, if unvoiced.

Heavy footsteps plodded through Sherlock's divergent train of thoughts, and the emergence of John hurled him undercurrent of Mycroft's and his encounters. The endless back-and-forth, the constant urging, every occasion Sherlock jabbed Mycroft about his weight wafted to the centre of his thoughts. He fell victim to his mind, swallowed deep under, to every remark uttered from his contemptuous lips, every detestable thing said to provoke a retort, one of the few quirks that troubled him, that really dug at Mycroft's skin.

John spoke to Mycroft, questioning his presence, and Mycroft slithered from the sofa before Sherlock's mind had time to pause, a moment to peruse something different than his perpetually looping reflections. Mycroft had an arm halfway through a jacket sleeve before the words tumbled awkwardly out of his mouth, a near silent whispering, just strident enough to seize Mycroft's notice, "No." He pleaded, "Stay."


	3. I Worry About Him. Constantly.

The silence did not persist for very long, less than the time it took Mycroft to comprehend what he had said, the damning words solidifying into Sherlock's psyche. John bounded up the stairs, trainers stomped against the oppressive silence, calling out for Sherlock, "Anyone home?" And then recognizing Mycroft, "Er, hullo Mycroft?"

Blood pounded in his ears, and he felt what he surmised trite persons experienced on a habitual basis, the absence of cohesive, articulate thought. Suffice to say, he did not enjoy it. After a moment, doubtless any longer than Sherlock's interpretations—and he dearly wanted to be not here when Sherlock commenced a harried rant-exploration of every facet he had briefly peered into. Presented with an alternative, Mycroft nodded at John, who, only just in this instant, subconsciously prepared for a response to his question.

Mycroft strode past John. "Good to see you, John, I contacted Sherlock. We're finished, so I'll be taking my leave then." He grasped his jacket from the stand adjacent to the top of the staircase descending to the entrance and out of this.

"No." A soft voice, scarcely a murmur, just exceeding a whisper and Mycroft faltered, glancing at Sherlock's gaze that had tracked him across the room. "Stay."

John stood between the two, hands raised in an inquiring gesture. "Uh, what did I miss?" he shot them equally baffled gestures.

Sherlock's look snapped to John temporarily, before returning to Mycroft, who shrugged a sleeve of his jacket over quivering fingers. "John, grab the first aid kit." One of John's eyebrows lifted, disappearing into his eyebrows, but Sherlock only waved with his hand and, aided by a sigh that expressed his extensive and profound suffering, John ascended the flight of stairs leading to his bedroom and the medical bag/first aid kit he prepared for the reverberations of the more violent cases.

"I only have a scant few minutes. Really must be off," Mycroft said faintly as he fastened the buttons on his jacket.

"No, I think you need to stay." Mycroft glared, but did not shift to depart, confident Sherlock could, and would, if he necessitated, physically coerce Mycroft. It had been years since Mycroft entertained the notion of physical self defence, and he found it thoroughly meaningless, what with the limitless secret service, dubious or no, at his disposal.

Mycroft remained erect, lest his knees buckle under the tightly wound anxiety firing off preservation instinct signals, near the top of the stairs, arms crossed to conceal the trembling in his fingers, and Sherlock glowered at him from the sofa, daring him to ineffectually attempt to escape. When John returned, first aid kit in tow, the two brothers had not stirred from their squared off positions.

"Do a full evaluation," Sherlock said, eyes lingering on Mycroft.

Mycroft barked out a laugh. "That's hardly necessary."

"I don't have all the stuff needed to do that here," John stated, skipping over questions (like "Why do you need an evaluation?" and "Is Mycroft ill?") Sherlock would counter with a short clipped grunt to articulate the dullness of those enquiries.

Sherlock rose and, before Mycroft and John realized what occurred, grasped the elder Holmes' wrist and hauled him to the sofa, forcing him to sit down on one of the cushions. Sherlock eyed John, and gestured he sit on the sofa also.

"Do what you can," he said as he leaped up into his chair, keeping most of his weight on his ankles as he kneeled rather than sat.

John nodded, and buried more, surely boring, queries about the entire situation, and considered Mycroft. Mycroft resisted the urge to swallow sharply. John may not be a deductive genius like Sherlock or himself, but the man was a damn good doctor. His underlings' extensive research almost two years ago confirmed that much.

John began by requesting Mycroft remove his jacket, and, once the garment was discarded, the tests started. An old fashioned blood pressure cuff strapped to his arm and John leaned in with his stethoscope. Mycroft attempted to regulate his breaths as the aneroid gauge rotated round, over the two hundred mark and reversed. The cuff dug into his arm, similarly to the constricting in his chest.

"It's a bit high," John said, surprise colouring his tone. "One sixty-one over ninety." He pressed two fingers into Mycroft's wrist, and Mycroft ignored the temptation to jerk away as John executed a pulse check. John watched the second hand on his wrist watch and mentally tallied the beats. "Nervous?" He asked after precisely one minute; he licked his lips.

"Yes," Sherlock said with full assurance sooner than Mycroft could backtrack with a lie, any lie. He had not experienced this mortification since his first day in the graduate academia building, a hall reserved for the most illustrious students, and one of his peers, and future government official, questioned the redness scattered as little blotches all over his face.

Unlike that confrontation decades in the past, where Mycroft imperturbably lamented about a non-contagions, but, oh so, very embarrassing inflammation, today, with John muttering on about his vitals and Sherlock speaking as Mycroft's representative without consent, he fumed. He wrenched his face from the fingers prodding his jaw line, and refused to meet John's perplexed gape.

The damage, however, was already over. "Your cheeks are swollen," he enquired, as if sceptical of his own medical logic. John had never seen Mycroft before his cheeks remained permanently rounded. He dug out a wooden cuticle pick out of a pack of many; the curved edges often used as a crude tongue depressor, and, at Mycroft's distant expression, hesitated.

"Keep going," Sherlock urged. John glanced at him, with an air of finality and astonishment, and maybe indignation. "I want your best opinion."

John turned back to Mycroft, eyebrows curved in an apologetic knit. "Open up, and say ahhh." Mycroft did so, nevertheless reluctantly, and John flashed a torch down his throat. "Definitely red," he murmured.

The testing continued with whatever equipment John had, or whatever he could scrounge up that emulated proper medical supplies, and Sherlock continued to answer for Mycroft—Mycroft's conduct became frantic, though to the average individual he seemed very much in control of his faculties. His fingers shook, and John noticed the coldness in his hands—poor circulation? His irises swivelled back and forth, not necessarily following the torch light serving as a rudimentary otoscope, and John saw glimpses of red smattering around his eyes, not much, and blood shot eyes—broken blood vessels, prolonged vomiting due to infirmity? His limbs felt heavy and frail all at once, and they trembled, and John noticed the lack of reflexive response and fatigue as he knocked against his knees and elbows—could be something serious, but most likely nerves, and why?

"What's the diagnosis?" Sherlock drawled from his chair. He steepled his fingers under his chin and intently perceived Mycroft like he already detected the answer.

John swivelled his head back and forth between the two brothers. If the patient had been a fifteen year old girl, or a wrestler trying to make weight, or anyone besides Mycroft Holmes, he would have insisted on psychological testing, offering referrals to mental services… He pursed his lips. "Could you open your mouth again?" John asked.

Mycroft obeyed, and John, though he was not a dentist, he remembered a few of the dental lessons he studied in his first year courses, inspected Mycroft's teeth as best he could without a dental mirror or other reflective object. The stains on the rear of Mycroft's teeth that differed from his fronts, yellowed tinge contrasting with virtually translucent white, were the last verification he required.

He gawked at Sherlock helplessly, the conclusion buzzing in his head, but he could not correlate it with the man who fundamentally commanded the nation. Sherlock reacted with a solitary lifted eyebrow, and John twisted back to Mycroft. He sought the analysis from a medical doctor. Fine then. Right.

When John's eyes latched on to his again, Mycroft watched his expression shift from acquaintance to clinical doctor: I'm-going-to-give-you-unpleasant-news. "I can only diagnose your physical symptoms." A disclaimer: Mycroft could snort.

John catalogued the host of medical maladies. It required every sense of decorum that had been drilled into him as a student and younger at Mummy's social events, to restrain from fidgeting or bolting as the list lengthened, John stopped ticking off symptoms on the fingers of his free hand.

"High blood pressure—which is strange," a pause, then, "elevated pulse, swollen cheeks, burst blood vessels, especially around the eyes, poor circulation, weak limbs, and inflamed throat." John recited an inventory of possible symptoms, a few he didn't have enough knowledge to affirm or deny, some he lacked the proper equipment, "possible premature hair thinning." Sherlock nodded at this. "Irregular heartbeat, discolouring on the backs of the teeth, poor eye motions."

"Very enlightening," Mycroft huffed. His stomach twisted at John's patronizing speech. So used to talking to civilians, his doctor mode unconsciously pressured him to describe his conclusions in elementary terms, and far, far below Mycroft's or Sherlock's intellectual capacity. Obvious, but Mycroft still felt the desire to clench his teeth against the faint throbbing in his molars that reminded him of the partially ransacked box of biscuits. He gulped down the spittle starting to gather in his mouth, and whipped his stray glance from the tea set.

Sherlock wordlessly stood and placed the box in a kitchen cabinet, closing it out of view, and Mycroft contemplated, if merely to himself, he was relieved by the peculiarly considerate deed. Sherlock came back with a tumbler of something alcoholic, and set it within Mycroft's reach. "Unofficial diagnosis?" He prompted John.

Before John could utter the seven syllables, the two words, Mycroft sipped the bourbon, enjoying in the harsh acridity of alcohol burning courage in him, and hands clutched against the glass in a death grip, his knuckles paling from red to white in strain, bit out the words, "Bulimia nervosa."

Another silence filled the room. Mycroft's gaze flitted around the sitting room, at the decorations he figured Mrs Hudson had cheerfully put up at the end of November, even conceivably stringing the two bachelors along, insisting the holidays necessitated some sprucing, particularly for couples. He almost smiled; this made him take pause. Over thirty years of actively destroying his wellbeing, just as many years hiding his eccentric behaviours, the last years of Mummy's health spent in upset because she knew, mother's intuition and all that rot, Mycroft, upstart citizen and political influence, was not content: he had not genuinely or sincerely felt the swift upraised twitch of the corners of his lips forcing his mouth into a smile for so long, his memory did not prompt a date in time.

A small movement from the other end of the sofa—John placing his medical paraphernalia in the bag—released him from the tortuous maelstrom of thoughts. He glimpsed round the space again, at the occupants. John sagged against the cushions, and Sherlock's face lit up with a smile as he noticed Mycroft's stare, a candid, full toothed smile Mycroft had only ever seen directed at the doctor. But, the smile was aimed at him; it was for him.

...


	4. Are You Really So Obvious, Because This Was Textbook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warning.** It's nothing as graphic as chapter two, but there is some description of ED behaviours/thoughts that were difficult to write.

Mycroft swallowed an additional luxury chocolate, part of a tin gifted by one of his colleagues—a Christmas gift he neither sought after nor uttered any gratitude upon receiving. He faked a smile; he hoped his lips twisted upwards in a farce of pleasure, anything to camouflage the revolted expression that warped his features. He loathed the chocolates; he spent the following week away from his office, catching himself in a reverie, envisioning what it would be to savour a morsel.

The chocolate gave way to a hazelnut interior, melting in his mouth, and he reached for another. He had escaped a business week, plus two days, before finally succumbing to the siren call of the sweets. He had left the tin open, with only one piece missing, perched on his desk in his absence. Mycroft rarely used the office. Though here he was, unrelenting, plucked yet one more, until the tin emptied and his fingernails scraped against cheap metal. Bile surged up his throat, and his stomach plummeted at the added weight.

He inhaled deeply, sucking breath through his nose, and delicately placed the empty box in his briefcase to dispose of at his earliest convenience. Mycroft let his body sag into the leather chair at his desk. Hands absently shifted through the piles of documents on his desk. Seven days passed since he had sat in this office, rather than reallocating his work to the Diogenes Club, and he desperately needed to systematize the accumulated clutter.

He desperately needed to vomit. Fingers clutched securely against a file, the paper crinkling in reaction to his ruthless manner. His heart pounded in his chest, and Mycroft felt nausea swell in his abdomen. A solitary hand fell to permit fingers to plot the surface of breadth the length of his abdomen. Starched, tailored fabric expanded, buttons clasped taut, to make space for his distended stomach. His mobile phone vibrated in his trouser pocket, a near soundless alert.

He drew it out, flicked his thumb across the screen to unlock the contents, and twisted the phone backwards to obtain an improved view in one fluid gesture. No words displayed in the text message, but he recognized the sending number as John's mobile. He quirked an eyebrow, and prepared to stash his phone, when the face illuminated, announcing a call from a fellow graduate alumni.

...

"I don't want to," is what reached Mycroft's ears (nonetheless the words were not vocalised so plainly), a petulant snivel of defiance from a small child. Only the man contradicting him was evidently a grown adult, even if he was his younger brother. He braced himself for a physical manifestation of Sherlock's paroxysm—a stamp of his leather penny loafer, crossed arms and a pinched scowl, or something equally as embarrassing in this type of ambience.

He accepted the cup of tea, milk and all, ignoring the squawks of disproval of his stomach after the impromptu consuming of the chocolates. He forced his mind not to wander and estimate the caloric damage. He nodded at Benjamin Whitley, an old and _dear_ friend from his graduate studies, and shot Sherlock a malicious glare when Benjamin's interest wafted to John. "I said no," Sherlock repeated. He overlooked the proffered tea one of the receptionists endeavoured to hand him.

"It should be effortless for someone of your reputation to decipher," Mycroft said superciliously and waved a free hand languidly through the air. He articulated himself in a manner to not affront his comrade, and Sherlock's prospective client, rather implied mediocrity in the consulting detective's expertise.

Sherlock took the bait. He nearly wrenched the cup from the pitiable lady's grip, and spat a rejoinder at Mycroft, "Then why don't you take it, if it's so easy?"

This attracted both John's and Benjamin's awareness, however this dialogue had been waged between the brothers countless times throughout their lives, commencing from an effort to persuade Sherlock to attend primary school even as he reckoned the curriculum far underneath his intellect, to their most recent banter. Mycroft swallowed deeply from his tea. It did naught to quell the festering sensation within his throat and abdomen.

It was not precisely a feeling that could be verbalised. Mycroft's throat stopped up minutely, imploring for something to fill it, toothbrush, hell, index and middle fingers to cajole the overly saccharine chocolates from him. Sipping or gulping his tea helped to some extent, until his psyche supplied every iota of nutritional information relating to cow's milk, so he bit out his relied upon automatic response, "Unfortunately, I find myself swamped at the office. Just the time this morning, I spent organising." He shook his head, an indication of ruefulness that only Benjamin and John (until Sherlock broke down Mycroft's reply into digestible segments for John afterwards) found genuine.

Sherlock's lips twitched as Mycroft conveyed artificial embarrassment about the mounting paperwork in the office. Mycroft met Sherlock's eyes with his own. He raised his brows, widening his eyes slightly, the look of virtuousness, and a subtle triumphant gleam.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed and chilled to ice; his lips burst part to retort, the lashing half escaped, before he faltered, and struggled to thrust the words behind the iron gate of his mouth. "How were the chocolates—?"

John whipped his head from gazing into his tea cup so violently, even Benjamin perceived the undercurrent of strain amid the two brothers. "If this is a bad time?" he inquired, uncertain how to react at the rather juvenile exhibit from a man he valued and the man he anticipated to, well, employ for however long the detective necessitated to expose the baffling deaths amongst his secretaries. He leaned forward against the mass of the figurative accusatory fingers prodding at him, at his laxity... "We could meet—"

Sherlock and Mycroft frowned at Benjamin, halting the man's ramblings. "No, it's fine. Sherlock will be happy to assist you," Mycroft said in monotone, as Sherlock replied flatly, "That won't be necessary."

John sighed, which Mycroft employed as an opportunity to conclude the conference. "Benjamin," he lectured, "is in a desperate predicament. His colleagues are beginning to inquire about the questionable deaths of his assistants." Just help him, for God's sake, and shut up.

Resigned, Sherlock addressed Benjamin, "How many have died so far?" Mycroft excused himself as the detective and client conferred the minutiae of the alleged murders.

He found his feet directed him down a lengthy hallway, two lavatories further than strictly necessary, but with Sherlock as a brother, he theorised the superfluous ten minutes of walking was undeniably warranted. He never did it in the daylight; he never succumbed to this whilst on the clock; disgust overflowed him as he contemplated the lack of toothbrush—quick and dirty with two, or three, or four fingers (at times the whole hand), he could perform the act, but he rather preferred not to. He let the loo door close behind him with a diminutive clack, trailing his fingertips on the door frame, and tried to forget what he was about to do.

Bent at the waist in front of the toilet, face introduced to the rim of the porcelain basin, his three centre fingers obstructing that frantic yearning in his oesophagus, Mycroft failed to notice the sound, a sharp thump, of the door crashing open with an echoing ricochet. He gagged on his fingers, spittle dripping down his hand, as the thud of a fist connecting solidly with the wall surrounded him, jarred his concentration. Mycroft blinked, returning to existence, comprehending where he was, who he was, and what might happen if this thing became broad knowledge.

He yanked his hand from his mouth, stomach gurgling in protest to the mass of chocolates rotting in his gut, and hastily wiped the translucent liquid off his hand with toilet roll. He jerked the door open, vaguely amused as Sherlock narrowly missed colliding with him at the abrupt movement.

"I thought you had a client to assist," Mycroft practically snarled as he brusquely shoved past Sherlock to cleanse his hands of the infinitesimal dredges of tea he had gotten up prior to being interrupted.

Sherlock rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "John's perfectly capable of taking notes." Mycroft adjusted the spigot pressure; Sherlock raised his voice to be heard over the rushing water.

Mycroft whirled around, black spots shadowed the corners of his vision; fleetingly appreciative this particular lavatory was not equipped with a gentleman dispensing recently laundered hand towels. Of course he would not dare execute that type of thing if there had been... Mycroft let his aggravation bleed over in his tirade to Sherlock. "Could you take anything seriously for _once_?" He noted Sherlock's off-putting idiosyncrasies in a farce to disregard his racing pulse, the blinding pressure under his eyes, and the discontent that he still had not rectified, the chocolates rapidly absorbing into the extra thickness he realized he acquired in adulthood.

Sherlock smiled, a grim, ugly caricature of cheerfulness. "I am taking this seriously."

"I'm fine," Mycroft ground out. He forcefully dried his hands on the substandard thin cotton towels provided.

"You left a dear friend because you binged on an entire tray of chocolates," Sherlock emphasized the phrase 'dear friend' similarly to Mycroft's prior regards for Benjamin Whitley. The dead tenor of his voice prevented Sherlock's verbiage from bouncing athwart the tiled walls, which Mycroft's shouted acerbic counter wrecked.

"I do not binge!" he exclaimed. Scarlet flushed his cheeks, a paler colour than the flecked blotched already emerging around his eyes. Thirty years of forced vomiting did not permit for any miscalculation, and this entire day had been a mistake on Mycroft's behalf: from giving into the temptation of the Christmas present he should have binned seven days ago, the reflexive need to coerce that fault out of him (another misstep), even deigning to acquiesce Benjamin and providing his brother as assistance.

Sherlock strived to meet Mycroft's eyes in vain as Mycroft sucked in a steadying breath and curled a hand into a fist, which neatly remained more or less cloaked by his suit sleeve. Instead, Sherlock's gaze meandered to the recently occupied toilet stall. "Bulimia nervosa is characterized by frequent periods of binging on large quantities of food then using inappropriate compensating measures," he said, sounding very much reminiscent of a transcribed psychology classification manual.

A reminder of what Mycroft divulged vocally roughly a month ago. "I know what an eating disorder is," he muttered. "Leave it be."

Mycroft failed to notice the instant when Sherlock's eyes dimmed as a sickening epiphany startled his centre of equilibrium. "Well," he said following an extended moment of both Holmes' brothers gazing at anything but each other in silence, "good luck with the diet."

Mycroft watched Sherlock turn on his heels and saunter out of the loo. His knees buckled, and a foreign sensation dotted the edges of his eyes. The chocolates from earlier announced their existence in his stomach, and resolute, he determined to alleviate himself of the sweets. Sherlock left the lavatory, and Mycroft returned to greet the toilet.


	5. "You're not haunted by the war... You miss it. Welcome back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warning.** There are scenes that could be graphic.

Swollen, inflamed knuckles, a flare up of petechiae, the lingering stink of chocolate and vomit on his index and middle fingers, the oleaginous sheen adding luminosity to his face—all glaringly overt indicators of the effects of ten minutes bent over a toilet bowl. Mycroft hated himself as he stared at his reflection in the mirror above the row of sinks twenty minutes after his confrontation with Sherlock. His hands shook, and he hastily stuffed them in his trouser pockets, brushing against his mobile and pocket watch. Another thorough glance over his appearance, and finding nothing he could rectify immediately, Mycroft exited the lavatory.

For this erring of his routine, for flailing into temptation, he resigned to cancelling it tonight. Lots of paperwork to finish, besides. He returned to the little room where Benjamin and Sherlock discussed the particulars regarding the mystery deaths of Benjamin's secretaries, excuse him, assistants. John interjected whenever Sherlock threatened to cross a social nicety. He sat, drawing the attention of all three.

"Crisis averted?" Benjamin asked.

Mycroft answered, never missing a beat, Sherlock's furrowed brow supplied him with all the information he needed, "Not without a guiding hand." And the conversation returned to the three dead assistants. Two females and a male, Mycroft realized, along with some secret Benjamin tried to hide as he described the second female. He would need to ponder that, to forewarn Sherlock, later, when the black spots faded from his vision and the hammering in his skull receded.

The meeting ended rather brusquely; with John's attention on Mycroft and Mycroft endeavouring to remain upright, neither man thought to conclude the meeting with proper decorum. Sherlock dismissed Benjamin with a curt prompt they would be meeting up in the near future. "John will be in touch with you." At this, John smiled at Benjamin, and asked for his mobile number, engaging Benjamin in salutations, as Sherlock jumped from his seat to pace from wall to wall, a trivial distance due to his long legs.

Mycroft pressed his thumb into his wrist, feeling the elevated pulse dance and sputter in a pantomime of normalcy. John and Benjamin left, closing the door behind them; Sherlock whipped his head round, stopped his frenzied pacing, and glared daggers at Mycroft. He plunked himself into what had been John's seat across from Mycroft.

Mycroft detached his hand from his sleeve, waiting for the eventual fallout, the intervention part deux. Familiarity of Sherlock prepared him for the man's irritability, because his mere presence incited anger within Sherlock. Rage, with a touch of revulsion, perhaps. When Sherlock spoke after a long minute, his word choice and emotionless tone silenced any retort Mycroft crafted. "Goodbye, Mycroft."

Mycroft watched Sherlock pull himself out of the chair and follow John and Benjamin's lead out of the room. He picked up a newspaper whose headline proclaimed one of the newest laws Mycroft had encouraged some men in higher up positions than his to pass into effect. He smiled, but his lips barely twitched upwards, and the action reminded him of the dull ache settling in his jaw. He tossed the paper aside, and allowed his lips to fall back into a grim non-expression. He brought up his personal calendar on his mobile, and noticed his blank schedule for late evening. His mind conjured images of supper and post supper sweets. The chocolates that he could still taste, along with stomach acid, seemed so long ago.

...

Mycroft rubbed his eyes as he hunched over his desk: an indication of another late night in his office, another late night of deluding himself he was accomplishing something and not solely halting the inexorable. Near midnight, he succeeded in convincing himself the knobs of pain spiralling in his abdomen were the product of tension brought on by his work. Four months had slipped through his fingers, sand through an hourglass of flesh, and though the evidence had yet to mock him in the intricacies of the British government, Mycroft was cognizant of the ruin that would await him if he did not _get off his bloody arse and fix it_.

He suppressed a cringe at the crude verbiage reverberating in the privacy of his mind. His eyes burned, a relentless lethargy he could not manage to elude, he avoided any needless legwork to hide the leaden uselessness of his body, his throat ached, an perpetually existing reminder of his late night frivolities—quite the reason his body failed him.

His hands shifted through mounting paperwork, the prompting of his mental inadequacies. He pursed his lips together in a severe grimace, quelling the escalating hotness in his chest, and as the rest of the nation slept, unbidden by the qualms of the next day, or the day after, all in a unyielding cycle, Mycroft stood gracefully, as was necessitated of his persona, and collected his personal affects, and left his office to de-stress in the single way he knew how.

Crème brulee, the elegant plunging of his spoon into burnt sugar, the crackling top giving way to silver, the intricate melding of rich heat and cool decadence, wrenched from his oesophagus with the opposite end of a toothbrush. He hunched in front of his toilet, absorbed on the deletion of incriminating desserts and the security cameras overseeing every iota of his property. His knees hurt at his age; years ago, this must have been easier, for he saw no motive to commit acts that required more exertion than strictly necessary.

He languidly went about it, taking advantage of the length of the night, and the early hours of the following day. As the moon traversed the sky, pushing towards daylight, Mycroft greeted the subsequent day with dry, prickly eyes, and a cup of tea with lemon and tea to mollify his abused throat. He desperately coveted the lure of a few hours of bliss his bed assured, regrettably these days, sleep was a commodity, a compulsory feebleness granted when, at last, his somnolent body collapsed, or the shameful moment when his mental fortitude buckled after the altercation with his brother in the view of Benjamin Whitley and he found himself incapable of crawling out from underneath his covers, let alone attend his accountabilities.

At least his instance of weakness prevented him from engaging in his disgusting routine. That day, like most days since that conference, he found himself dependant on his assistant, known, for preservation, as Anthea. She assisted him with the extra duties with nary a word of opposition; she continued her work with Mycroft as if the dynamics had not changed between their professional relationship. So as he ogled longingly at the warm duvet, he was unsurprised by the brief text message notifying him of plans she organized for him.

For his career obligations: after months of fastidiously snubbing Sherlock, for months he had not spent vigorously monitoring his younger brother or the good doctor, Mycroft's assistant arranged a consultation on Benjamin Whitley's request. The persistent twinges in his abdomen flared up as he donned one of his numerous striking and very extravagantly tailored suits. Mycroft grabbed a banana as Anthea's most recent text message alerted him of a government car's arrival within the next minute.

After ceaseless nights, endless rounds of tonsil hockey with the blunt end of a toothbrush, Mycroft lost his appetite for a balanced breakfast. The increased snugness of his trousers reminded him he could not force up every last calorie, so breakfast soon vanished from his three required meals. He ate the banana, abhorring both the texture and the taste, as he mechanically swallowed the offending fruit. He choked down a banana daily as part of his farce: he was not physically impaired by his habits.

Anthea and the government car pulled up, quick to whisk him off to the last residence he desired to step foot. The ride was short, and his assistant flashed him a small smile, one that fragmented her façade to expose her concern. Mycroft nodded to the driver as he opened the door, ignoring the foreign emotions displayed on Anthea's face. He would rectify his political standing later; for now, he had to suffer the company of Benjamin Whitley, his old and dear friend whom demanded this meeting at 221B Baker Street.

He concealed his astonishment, when he departed the car and did not identify Benjamin in the throngs of persons littering Baker Street. He huffed, but continued his travel up to Sherlock's and John's flat. Luckily Mrs Hudson was either indisposed or not home to badger him this time. He ascended the stairs, flouting the lethargy that inundated him in a plebeian task such as walking a flight of stairs.

John's voice welcomed him, long before Mycroft could gather his bearings, and invited him to the flat he shared with his brother. "Mycroft, sit down."

Sherlock tensed in his chair. "What're you doing here?" he spat. He jumped from his crouch, and crossed the room to glare out the window.

He settled into the couch as he had over months prior; Mycroft's intellect churned slowly. Like butter dripping away in the afternoon sun, he found himself unable to keep hold of a single thought. "I believe we are discussing the matter of Benjamin Whitley's secretary death count." Even as he supplied an answer, before Sherlock swivelled around to grace him with a denigrating yet triumphant sneer, Mycroft recognized he had said the wrong thing, knew that, in this instance his months' worth of incomplete paperwork had come to haunt him.

His throat stopped up, and he veiled his trembling hand in the cuffs of his sleeves, even as John revealed the inner machinations behind this...this foul pseudo intervention. "Anthea was worried about you, for, well awhile. She said your health dropped off in the past few months or so, since Christmas break."

"She's worried herself over nothing. My health is fine, considering." Mycroft missed the presence of his umbrella. Forced to grip its base, Mycroft was better able to regulate the tremors in his limbs. Without the barrier, he crossed his arms to his chest, and tried to overlook his discomposure.

Sherlock snapped his gaze from the window, eyes glaring balefully at Mycroft. "Quite fine, considering you're not eating. And anything you do eat, you're throwing up."

Mycroft lifted the edges of his lips in a cool smirk, "I fear you're overzealous deduction is incorrect." Inwardly he scoffed. He ate. Sure, the lack of breakfast, and most mid-morning snacks were because he had no appetite, still stuffed with his night time activities, and the occasional skipped lunch—only on his off days when he was under no obligations to consort business partners to luncheons, teas that fell to the wayside of his tight work schedule, and dinners had always lead to impromptu binging, so he shied away from those also—when the temptation to masticate on biscuits remained, on the intermittent juncture, absent. Regardless.

Mycroft gestured aimlessly with his dominant hand, a percentage of his thoughts engaged in the weightlessness of his limb. He realized all his limbs felt similar. He set his hand back down at his side; the mass of his arm marginally countering the detached sensation. "John already diagnosed you." Sherlock spoke to the window.

John set the tea kettle he had been tinkering with and shot a piercing look at Sherlock, pointing a tea mug in his direction. The gesticulation blurred Mycroft's vision; he blinked it back. He was fine, just worn-out from his night of not sleeping. "Technically, I cannot and did not diagnose him officially."

"Semantics," Sherlock pressed. He reverted his focus to Mycroft, who concentrated on the struggle of keeping his heavy eyelids open. "Stop hiding!" He thundered, and Mycroft flinched. His eyelids fluttered shut, giving up the battle, and he drifted off, not before hearing the anxious voice of John, and, assuredly his duped mind provided the soft, "Mycroft!?" from Sherlock.

...


	6. Interlude 2

Lying in hospital, just over six months shy of majority, seventeen year old Sherlock reproached the enforced intervention, even as Mycroft's smug countenance beamed down at him. Father and Mummy, and arrogant, impeccable, Mycroft whispered about his circumstance near the door even as he glowered from the starched bed, because faultless Mycroft never had filthy little secrets beseeching to be exposed, because Mycroft never rang Sherlock, desperate and spare weeks previously. Not that Mycroft performed interminably concerned wizened brother to secrete his own down spiralling life, but that was adequate, he was just fine—thank you very much, superb Mycroft never twisted base needs.

Bed sheets furrowed in curling hands as he overheard Mycroft's haughty opinion about what ought to be done with Sherlock (how best to sweep away the sordidly of drug misuse), and the conceivable disquiet Sherlock's seditiousness would affect his career aspirations (because cocaine usage by a close relative this many years into the Reagan's "just say no" crusade threatened to smear his impeccable reputation). The juvenile implication coursed through him: it's all about you, yeah? And he seethed odium from that starched hospital bed, as he recalled not more than a few weeks ago, Mycroft's desperate ring as the sun broke against the horizon. It is perfectly copasetic for the elder Holmes brother to plead for an immediate remedy.

It clicked quicker than Sherlock processed the ramifications, teeming from his mind palace (jumbled bedlam, scarcely coping devoid of the addition of stimulants to coerce his physical body to maintain pace): hospital, the unanticipated examining of his bedroom, the contraband in Mummy's hand as tears slipped down her angular cheeks. This was deliberate. He swallowed back abhorrence at the revelation; subconsciously, from the first time he saw Mycroft's smug countenance over his bed, he knew.

Dependence: whether it is cocaine prepared from seven percent solution in his school's chemistry lab or fifteen weeks of rampant binging and purging in place of scratching pencil against paper for his dissertation. Failure: an adult sentence, replete with a criminal record or termination of the first of many requisite post graduate degrees. Both with the potential to tarnish the entirety of the Holmes brothers' adult lives. Seventeen year old Sherlock clenched his hands into fists as twenty three year old Mycroft plucked at newly moulded government strings to sweep the drug calamity underneath any metaphoric rugs—in the same sycophantic manner Sherlock produced a hundred pages long dissertation in a single night.

Time elapsed; Mycroft's political sphere of influence convoluted until he, quite possibly, trounced the Queen ("lovely lady, the very pinnacle of the British nation"), Sherlock treaded outside the corroded underbelly of the drug world, only to find himself entrenched, once again, ten years later as he gazed up into the steely eyes of Detective Inspector Lestrade as his body decelerated and crashed in the awful withdrawal. Lives formerly entwined, diverged as Mycroft submerged his reprehensible past and selected the façade of just fine, and Sherlock, forced, somewhat reluctant, in his late twenties by Lestrade and his meddlesome brother, near a decade after Mummy's passing, to manage without the swiftness conveyed by a Class A drug.

Their lives connected as Sherlock stared down Mycroft as the intervention, courtesy of John, reversed. He tolerated the meagre banter and distressed pandering trickle from Mycroft's lips, until: "I believe we are discussing the matter of Benjamin Whitley's secretary death count."

He fixed a triumphant smirk on his face, and gazed into the depths of Mycroft's eyes--fatigued, fraught with bags akin to bruises: insomnia and mounting stress at work, streaked with lightning-like red snaking from iris, out: an outcome of time consumed purging and not sleeping, vacant, shadowed by a desperation to banish away emotions: he dreaded this visit… The list mentally composed itself as Sherlock observed imperfections in Mycroft's demeanour. Months of duping only colleagues and dear friends, and hiding from the individual whom cared enough to look past artificial smiles distending taut, swollen cheeks, crinkled eyes cloaking the inflammation of red dots, left his defences at nil.

"Anthea was worried about you, for, well awhile. She said your health dropped off in the past few months or so, since Christmas break." John's spoken inquiry brought the exact intention of the gathering to a head, a motive Sherlock ascertained with Mycroft's statement about Benjamin Whitley. It had been months since Sherlock concluded the guileless case. He had charged Mycroft's dear friend royalties to assuage the utter drivel of a case. Sometimes unfortunate deaths were just that.

Mycroft crossed his arms, and Sherlock recognised Mycroft's nutrient starved brain struggle to accept the notion of John's substandard intervention, so he pointed the detail out plainly, "Quite fine, considering you're not eating. And anything you do eat, you're throwing up." The declaration was nothing short of childish, and Sherlock reasoned a primary school student could make the deduction. Mycroft's body was failing him.

"I fear you're overzealous deduction is incorrect." A frail rejoinder from an ever frailer man. Sherlock noted the absence of Mycroft's hands as he failed to furtively tuck them away in his shirt cuffs.

He pursed his lips. When Mycroft gestured with one of his trembling hands, Sherlock said, "John already diagnosed you." The succinct account declared to cease the nonsense and carve through the decades of mendacities. Disagreement nullified, no questions asked, frank and to the point.

Before the back-and-forth quarrelling and psychological argument escalated, John interjected, cutting off both brothers and halting the succeeding round of acerbic retorts, "Technically, I cannot and did not diagnose him officially."

"Semantics," Sherlock huffed at John, before returning his attention to Mycroft. Eyes blazing, he barked, "Stop hiding!"

Sherlock's chest constricted when he saw Mycroft's eyes flutter shut, and he anticipated Mycroft collapsing into a dead faint instants before he slid to the floor as John crossed the room with experienced rapidity of the status he attained in the armed forces. "Mycroft!?"


	7. All Lives End…Caring Is Not an Advantage, Sherlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warning.** I cannot write much about it without giving away the end, but I thought I should put a warning. Read cautiously.

_Nearly three decades past, what should be Mycroft Holmes's final semester, a concrete fifteen weeks to write his graduate university's compulsory dissertation. His chest ached with the emptying of his stomach, fingers working desperately to shroud his peers' rebukes, the begrudging acceptance—if only because his envious grade point average. He promised himself in that very first luncheon that very first day of graduate classes, he would never find himself in this position again, giving absolution in the form of purging._

_His throat burned as he wrenched acid bile from his oesophagus and he felt dreadful—all shaky and headachy, and he cannot possibly write a hundred words, let along the hundreds of pages he is expected to deliver the next morning. Fifteen weeks: fifteen weeks promising he would start the paper tomorrow, after his last-ever binge and purge, the last time he crossed the campus green to the undergraduate dining halls and stuffed his face with cheap processed deliciousness, the finale to his troubled youth and poor coping mechanisms of adolescence._

_The answering machine in the sitting room, adjacent to the lavatory where he currently knelt in desperation, clicked on and his advisor's nasally tenor reminded him of his responsibility, his assurance to deliver the final paper by eight o'clock in the morning._

_He had not even started. Not once had pencil scratched across paper in preliminary research; not once had he clicked away on his computer, a graduation gift from mummy and father, inputting a final analysis on his dissertation. Twelve hours; one hundred plus pages. The math was not on his side. He pulled himself from the toilet and disoriented, stumbled to the phone, fingers tapping out a set code of digits by heart._

_"I need your help," Mycroft acquiesced when seventeen year old heroin addled Sherlock answered the phone._

…

Awakening was akin to the blade slicing into unmarred flesh—a piercing awareness as consciousness hummed around his nerve endings. Mycroft bit back a groan as Sherlock's and John's dimly lit living room swam into focus. Shite, his mind supplied. Buggered didn't start to cover the expanse of the anomalous flicker of light glinting in Sherlock's eyes or the deep set knowledgeable frown hardening John's features.

Before he had detached himself from the haphazard sprawled tumble upon the couch where he intuited he must have passed out, Mycroft readied an excuse, albeit insubstantial, a desperate attempt to maneuverer the only foreseeable outcome of this… With dual heated expressions aimed at him, he offered a deplorable primitive excuse, the best he could muster, harkening from years of segregation in his primary schooling, long before he tampered with his eating habits:

"I'm fi—" the words dribbled from his mouth, a repetitive assurance. Graduate school: long nights spent with his head over a toilet whilst he should have laboured away on his dissertation; frigid days declining to make eye contact with his peers, with his haute monde, too burdened organising the next reprieve from life. University, college, secondary school: the years trickled backwards in a monotonous years long blur as he recollected every occurrence, a dialogue terminated, halted, by those two words.

"Fine?" Sherlock interrupted. His face twisted, and Mycroft knew he remembered the past three decades, the public persona hoisted upon lies, of affirming platitudes. I'm fine; I'm always fine. Everything is fine, because Mycroft cannot cope with the possibility of his persona unravelling in those same fine rivulets as his mask splintered to ruins, but everything must be fine.

John's voice sliced through Mycroft's thought process, a welcome distraction until the good doctor's words cycled the conversation full circle, "It isn't an official diagnosis, but I think," he hesitated to press his lips together in a severe line, "you even admitted it."

Mycroft's chest burned in remembrance. Yes, back in December he had looked from his tumbler of homey-amber liquid courage, heart aflutter with hope. As the Christmas celebrations died away, Mycroft's heart sank and any optimism he felt withered away and fell in clumps, forgotten, with decaying evergreen trees on suburban back porches.

"Don't bother, John." Sherlock wrenched his face from Mycroft's view and flung himself into his chair. Shoe-clad feet propped at the edge of the cushion as he lifted his hands skyward as if in prayer. He threaded his fingers together and vehemently glowered at John, whom sat across from him. "He's just _dieting_." Sherlock emphasized the gregarious understatement of Mycroft's eating disorder.

An ugly sneer curved Sherlock's lips upwards, a parody of distress, an expression intimately familiar to Mycroft. Before Sherlock had an opportunity to bite out a scathing remark (likely concerning Mycroft's weight and/or eating habits), John intervened with a loud sigh. He pressed a palm to his face; a stance that conveyed his weariness in regards to the fraternal discordance. John tilted his head and slanted his eyes in Mycroft's, then Sherlock's direction in incredulousness, a silent: really?

Mycroft stiffened at John's retort, more so at the question that followed. "We already know it's more than a diet," John said evenly, shrugging with both his arms outspread as he glanced at Sherlock meaningfully. That same penetrating look caught Mycroft's gaze, and John asked, "What's wrong?"

Nothing is wrong. Everything is fi—. Even Mycroft's internal monologue shorted out at the pithy reasoning. His breath hitched, and he scowled at his reaction to the gentleness in John's voice, at the concern woven in the brief question. A part of him yearned to reach out, to divulge everything:

A political career built on the shambles of plagiarism; a degree earned through bribery of a heroin addict kid brother: ultimately his position, his most influential covert ruling of the British government, and the CIA on a freelance basis, was guaranteed to crumble on the remnants of its foundation. His dear friend, Benjamin Whitley and his proposition of government control, even as he perceived Mycroft's darkest secret, apparent at the corners of his eyes or the slight bulging of his cheeks.

The gilded nature of a government career—the golden prestige sought after by laymen and the corroded underbelly of inner workings, lose-lose, forced companions one later regretted, the constant, unrelenting hiding—necessitated Mycroft's façade. If he was not fully one hundred percent, then he better damn well make his guise appear genuine.

As if he had admitted to Mycroft's current thoughts, John's next query struck him at his core. "Are you having trouble at work?" The question bubbled out in an awkward jumble and more formal than John usually spoke.

A pleasant, practiced smile. "Of course not."

At this, Sherlock leaned forward. He smiled widely, a malicious smile of a seventeen year old boy granted the largest bribing chip from his older sibling. He did not need to utter a word; Mycroft deduced the scathing remark behind his upturned smirk, and he scowled with a furrowing of his lips.

John started. His eyebrows shot into his hairline and he looked at Mycroft like a small child expecting an answer.

"It's…It wouldn't be work if it was all fun," Mycroft replied after a minute, a doleful circumvention, which Sherlock instantly saw through.

He snorted. "Thought you enjoyed pulling the strings of your politician dolls."

"Really Sherlock," Mycroft stated with ease as they slipped into familiar dialogue. "I occupy a minor position in the government."

"That's not what I asked." John halted the thread of conversation before the two siblings degenerated to petty squabbling. He faced Mycroft with a seriousness that rivalled Sherlock entrenched in a serial murder detective case. "Is that what's causing this?"

Mycroft fought against the intrusive memories warring to the forefront of his thoughts. Locked in his office a few weeks after the New Year, coaxing down luxury hazelnut chocolates, one after another, to silence the world for a few more minutes. Accustomed to overeating and purging as coping mechanisms for so long, he did not know how to deal with extraneous stressors without it. And when it became too much, against his better conscious, his fingers burrowed deeply in his mouth, and everything paused…

The weariness of everyday tasks, from rousing to an alarm set on his blackberry, to swallowing the last dredges of proper black tea (without the offence of milk in the privacy of his home), to carefully deciding which of his voluminous suits he ought to cloak himself within: in particular, his morning routine, exhausted him. Mycroft considered a time he had derived pleasure from politics: high tea with his colleagues in the early afternoon hours and social customs as a farce for conversation, the weighty decisions, some enough to shift the nation's stability as if tipped precariously on needle point. The flurry of excitement in his gut, excitement over the newest undetected machination, even just a few scant months prior; when had it transformed into frayed nerves splintering as he forced weary eyes open with multiple cups of tea and the promise of nipping to the grocer's to restock his binge food?

Mycroft smoothed the creases of his suit as his prepared to extricate himself from, first, the couch, then the apartment. "It's not really any concern of yours," at this, he cocked a glance at John. "I admit my eating has not been exactly—" he paused "—healthy, but…" The words died on his lips as an epiphany of sorts cracked upon his head and dribbled in cold shivers down his upper back. He knew what words to say to absolve himself of his own admittance, his own guilty plea of the diagnosis of bulimia nervosa, yet, as the vocabulary fluttered independently in his thoughts, he could not coerce his lips open, allowing the verbiage to bleed over.

If he finished the reclamation of his bulimia confession, he might well sever the ties to his brother, the final living tie to Mummy. And no Holmes' brother every desired to break their mother's heart. His chest ached as an icy resolution trickled down to his gut, and suddenly, the last few months, the last few decades, everything working towards the present, burned away the last tendrils of hope, and he spat out the damning words, lest he alter his convictions.

"I'll manage. I've long proved I am capable to look after myself." The implication bloomed outwards. Mycroft: the better Holmes, effigy of perfection, stroked with humbleness, the _good_ one. "This isn't like one of your danger nights."

A moment lengthened into eternity. Sherlock's face tightened as John's jaw slackened. A deathly quiet, "Get out" uttered from his brother's lips, and Mycroft silently followed his younger brother's orders.

Mycroft allowed Mrs. Hudson to smother him with concerned platitudes ("Oh, these things happen all the time in a family!") as numbness descended upon his heart. He could scarcely breathe and his eyes burned. He forced back the constriction in his throat. He slid into the back seat of one of his many government cars and offered Anthea the barest of smiles as he directed the driver to his personal home. For today, at least, work was bared no significance in his thoughts.

Mycroft's mobile vibrated softly from his trouser pocket. He pressed a finger to the side of the phone, ending the interfering noise, and ignoring it, as he led himself into his expansive home, filled with the best décor money could afford. The stilted bareness of the impersonal decorations burrowed under his skin, mingling with the detachment icing over his heart as his feet padded near silent across the wooden floors to his bedroom.

…

John exhaled loudly. He slid his mobile shut with a jarring snap as his call bounced back for the third time in the past hour. He had lost count how many times he tried Mycroft's mobile in the past few days. He whirled round on Sherlock, whom sat stiffly in the same crouched position, fingers rigidly steeped under of chin, unmoved (aside for barest necessities) since Mycroft's departure. His eyes smouldered in a caricature of the gloomy shroud encroaching the apartment.

"Sherlock," John announced, a preliminary cautioning of what penalties would confront the detective should John's inquiries continue to remain unanswered. Sherlock deigned to respond minimally, scarcely blinking at John's reverberating voice, much like the preceding attempts in the days since.

"Sherlock." Sharper this time, and Sherlock blinked at the acknowledgment of his name vocalised from his friend.

"Yes, John," his voice drawled, as if lagging behind wherever his thoughts hovered.

"Mycroft," John stated and Sherlock's eyes hardened in resentment. "Will he be alright?"

"He'll be _fine_ ," Eyes widening on the word fine, Sherlock mocked. John brought the mobile to his ear again as he rang Mycroft's mobile, again reaching dead air.

…

_"A pleasure to meet you," a mid-twenties, thirty-year younger Mycroft extended an eager arm forward on his first day of classes of his post graduate education. He offered one of his peers his undivided attention in the form of a practiced politician's smile. He did not flinch when his peer's eyes flickered to his own, and the young man's smooth politeness fractured into mordancy._

_"Eating disorder." Of course, during Mycroft's graduate studies in the mid-1980s, males and eating disorders were not synonymous, and Mycroft only recalled the embarrassment of his classmate's comment, and decades later the rejoinder presented itself as two acerbic words, a reminder._

_Their introductions crashed to a halt as Mycroft stammered an excuse, any excuse, to explain away the petechiae rimming his eyes. From the first day, he found himself labelled an effigy of a young man from affluence—complete with the first world stigma attached. And he loathed it, even as the shameful lusting for overindulgence crept into all areas of his life._

_Mid-twenties Mycroft Holmes refused to find himself, over the fourth decade mark in the same damnable cycle. He vowed to never become that way, no matter what._

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I would upload this on here since I finally got an account. Apologies if you've already read it on ff.net.


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